Even in Death I’ll Love — 死了都要爱

If the last song we did on here got 11 out of 10 for cheesiness, this one gets at least that for melodrama. Our teachers sang it last time we went to karaoke.

死了都要爱 / Even in Death I’ll Love / sǐle dōu yào ài

Shin (信乐团) is a popular rock band from Taiwan. “Even in Death I’ll Love” (死了都要爱) is a popular Korean song (“Love Over 1000 Years”) that Shin rewrote in Mandarin, thereby giving young internet-surfing East Asians yet another opportunity to argue about whose culture is derived from whose. The lead singer, A Shin (阿信) — who, as you’ll see in the video, is apparently quite the diva — left the band last year to launch a solo career in which he’s shamelessly selling out to the pretty-fied Asian pop market with syrupy Josh Groban covers. I have two Shin CDs; they sound like Evanescence with an 80’s rocker streak, and list Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin among their musical influences.

Here’s the epic live version (lyrics and guitar chords are below):

And here’s an mp3 of the album version:

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Lyrics & Guitar Chords

Download: SileDouYaoAi.pdf (lyrics & guitar chords with pinyin/English cheatsheet). The guitar chords match the album version; the live version is in a different key.

歌词 / gē cí / Lyrics (the English needs help):

把每天当成是末日来相爱 / bǎ měitiān dàngchéng shì Mòrì lái xiāngài
Take every day like it’s the last day you have to love each other
(“Take every day like Armageddon has come to your love for each other”)

一分一秒都美到泪水掉下来 / yī fēn yī miǎo dōu měi dào lèishuǐ diào xiàlai
Each minute and each second are all so beautiful that tears fall down

Translating the interviews for the “Regular Zhou” column. It takes more Chinese than we have, and getting that much help is a pain. Even once you have everything transcribed into hanzi, there are still parts I can’t translate properly and have to ask about. It’s so monstrously tedious on account of our poor Chinese. I really shouldn’t be attempting translations like this yet, but it’s fun ;) Just not so sure it’s worth my time language-wise.